When The Singing Stops
by Yasmin
Summary: Yes. Another Lily/James fic. (But it isn't Love/Hate!) A fic set in the MWPP era, a tale of hope, life, and much disliking of cabbage. (No, I'm kidding) Told by a 25 year old Lily Potter, she takes you back to the beginning, where her memories unfold and


I'm writing a Lily/James fic. Again. Hopefully this time, it isn't so bad. *Grins* If you like it, drop me a review and tell me, it's motivation to keep going. There are various quotes throughout this fic, some from Buffy and Blackadder, some are famous quotes that I hear and write down. If I forget to cite them, I'm sorry. Nothing belongs to me, except OC's and plot. Even the plot is just an appropriation of something that I'm sure has been done before. Everything has been done before. Thank you to Sarah-jane and Ember for betaing for me. I adore you both. *huggles*

****

Chapter One 

I may not look it on first appearances, but I'm a witch. A real witch, with a pointed hat and a wand and broomstick. It's a very old broomstick though, and my husband James is in a complete state of disgust about it. He thinks that he's going to have our son, Harry, up in the air in a few months, and playing Quidditch for the house team by the time he's eleven. I didn't bother pointing out that first years _never_ make the house team. Even _he_ didn't, and he was a great Quidditch player. But trying to budge an idea from James' brain once it is lodged in there is almost like drawing teeth - damn near impossible. I'm twenty-five, and have been married to James Potter for four years, and believe me, I know. 

It was Georgia's idea for me to write everything down on paper, get it all out. She says that if I vent, it'll help me deal with things a bit, and that I can't handle things unless my opinion is known, and acknowledged. Well, since when did she become my psychiatrist? Not that it does any harm to write it all down. It passes time and takes my mind off the issues at hand. I realise that it's just a form of escapism, but see… I'll never really escape the reality of everything, no matter how hard I try. Even if I'm lost in the memories, the present will always be at the back of my mind, a constant reminder of what is real, and what is not. I don't live in the past; I always want to move on. 

This is really bad when I try to hold a grudge. 

So here I am, locked in my bedroom with a huge stack of parchment bound together like a giant note pad, and a quill, trying to figure out what to say, what to write, what I want to remember enough to put onto paper. No, forget that. I'm going to write out everything, even the things I don't particularly want to remember. Where to start? The beginning is usually a very good place to start - to quote Julie Andrews. Oh well, here goes nothing, then.

***

The first thing that I wanted to do was run back through that barrier between platforms nine and ten, back to my parents who were, by my calculations, making their way back to the car. There was nothing scarier, to me, than being sent off to boarding school. I'd had nightmares in my youth about dorm mistresses with chains and manacles for those who misbehaved. This wasn't your average boarding school though; it was a magical school for Witchcraft and Wizardry. Don't laugh, I'm serious -- Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, to be precise. 

I don't think I fully believed in magic though… Actually, I can _assure_ you that I did not believe in magic. I thought it was some elaborate trap to get me to go to a Catholic girl's boarding school, my ultimate nightmare. I got the letter a month before term was meant to start, and that month went so quickly it was blurred. I went to a place called Diagon Alley and though I remember everything vividly, it's almost like I wasn't really there, but watching myself from some distant place. 

I remember the day that I got my Hogwarts letter. It was addressed to Miss Lily Rose Evans (Yes. My mother loved her garden and decided that we, as her spawn, should carry on that legacy through our names) and had a crest on the back of the envelope, an H in the middle with a badger, a raven, a snake and a lion around it. Mum and dad thought it was a hoax at first, but then they read a letter from the headmaster which I later found out was sent to every muggle born witch or wizard. Then they decided to show me the letter, which had little pictures moving around on it and I was compelled to admit that it seemed a bit magical. 

Something happened that day, though - which made them believe in magic, and made them believe that it wasn't just a hoax. I'm very glad it happened though, because if it hadn't, they would have tossed it aside as junk mail.  
  
Petunia was annoying me more than usual that day, she kept pushing and pushing me until something inside me just snapped and I turned her into a horse. I was so shocked, I just stood there gawking at her, or where she had been, where a small horse was now standing, giving me a bizarre look. 

Yes. A bizarre look - there is no other way to describe it. Petunia as a horse was little better than Petunia as a person, really. She was a grey horse, and looked very malnourished. I think she was far too shocked to do anything except look at me in that bizarre way. The horse, or Petunia, opened its mouth a few times as if it wanted to say something. A crazed, possessed look came into its eyes, as she started to realise what had just happened. That probably would have been a good time for me to leave the room, as horses have powerful hindquarters, and apparently have teeth to match. Before I could run out of the room, there was a knock at the door, and three men came in who were wearing black and navy robes.

"We're representatives of the Accidental Magic Reversal department," said one of them. My parents just nodded dumbly, and almost as quickly as it had happened, Petunia was back to normal. One of the men pointed a wand at her and said 'Obliviate' and her eyes rolled back in her head and she stood there, docile for a few minutes before shaking her head and continuing to taunt me. By the time she was back to her lovely repellent self, the men had gone.

I think that was all it took to convince them that magic did exist. Unfortunately - ever the skeptic - I wouldn't accept it. Oh, I vaguely remember my parents sitting me down and asking if I wanted to go. In my stupor, I agreed. I did want to go, because despite it all being so new to me; I was fascinated by it, and had to agree that being magic was a terribly exciting thing. 

It wasn't until I was on the train that the reality of it hit me. Not the reality of the magic bit, the reality of the boarding school bit. I wouldn't see my parents often, except for holidays. I would be away from home with a whole heap of strangers learning magic. I had to swallow the wave of nausea that hit my stomach, and was threatening to shove my last meal vegetable-first out of my mouth. 

There was a positive side to it, though. Petunia wasn't a witch, and hadn't gotten a letter, so there was no chance of being stuck at the same school as her. She was a bit upset at first, and I tried not to rub her face in it. She went around pretending that she didn't care, but I heard her asking mum if she'd gotten a letter from Hogwarts. She grew really bitter about it when a letter didn't come for her by the time I was meant to be leaving, and changed her tact. Instead of being upset, now she would refer to me as a freak. A genetic throw back, who shouldn't have been born. Well, what was mum supposed to do? Shove me back into the womb and demand a refund? Petunia and I have never gotten along. It's almost like we come from different families. We're polar opposites, but not that we complement each other like polar opposites are said to do. We are just that different. She looks like Dad, tall, blonde and skinny. Me, on the other hand… I take after mum. I'm short, have dark red hair and green eyes. I'm thin, but I'm not bony and skinny like my sister. In the end, I got so fed up with her resentment towards me, I just yelled at her one day "I am a WITCH, you are NOT, _deal with it_." 

In hindsight, probably not a good move. Her sisterly dislike of me turned into hatred, which just grew and grew over the years. Mum and dad didn't help that at all, of course they didn't go out of their way to make her feel bad, but they were proud to have a witch in the family. She took that to mean that she didn't live up to their expectations, which wasn't how it was at all. I wish she could have just been happy for me. As much as she hated me, and we didn't get along, she was still my sister, and I loved her.

I've had a fairly normal childhood, and when I say normal, I mean by wizarding standards. I had a mother, a father, and a sister, Petunia. My parents fought a lot when we were younger, and my dad left for about five months when I was five. He came back though, and after that, the fighting was nothing more than banter. I guess my parents figured out that they loved each other more than they hated each other. My mother controlled the household. My father may have been the head of the family, but my mother was the neck. Nobody has ever doubted that my mother ran the family. We lived in a house in Surrey for as long as I could remember, and it was a nice house. Petunia and I got along fine, like most other siblings. We fought a bit, but when I started primary school, she made sure none of the older kids were mean to me. I never had a lot of friends at school. I held back a bit, and when anyone tried to befriend me, I never really opened up to them. I had a group of girls that I sat with, and we got along quite well. It wasn't what I'd call friendship, but it meant that I didn't have to sit by myself in the playground. We would play in the sand pit, to see who could make the biggest sandcastle, but we never hung around on weekends. The only time we really saw each other outside of school was at birthday parties, and school events. I never let people in too far when I was younger. My mother always told me not to be played a fool, and to always make sure that people had good intentions. This resulted in me being a very suspicious and skeptical child and teenager.

Another thing that ostracized me from others was the fact that sometimes I would get angry when things weren't going my way, and would make weird things happen. I didn't ever notice that odd occurrences always coincided with one of my seething fits of anger, until one of the girls I sat with said quite innocently, "Did you see that, Lily? It was like magic!" I don't know where I got the idea that she had accused me of practicing magic, but I did, and got even angrier, and managed to make a bucket and spade fly at her head, while storming off, yelling "IT WAS NOT!"

I was quite a defensive little bugger, wasn't I?

So there I was, sitting on the train feeling home sick already. I decided to play with my wand to make myself feel better. You know when you buy something knew, and you want to play with it? I'm like that, I love it when you get something new, that is really cool, and you play with it, and you pore over the packaging. That's what I was like. I kept swishing it around on the train, so that gold sparks would fly out of it. I had an idea, I opened my trunk and rooted through it until I found my Charms textbook, and pulled it out. I love the feeling of new books, crisp, clean pages that have never been marked or dog-eared. I looked for a spell in the beginning of the book, just an easy one. There was a levitation spell on the third page, and I decided to have a go at it, to see how it happened - I figured there was no harm in getting a little practise in before turning up. There were some instructions as to how to use your wand effectively, so that the spell had less chance of going wrong. _Swish and flick your wrist in a gentle motion._ I practiced that for a while, until I was sure I had it right. Then I practiced the words. _Wingardium Leviosa_. A loud horn interrupted my thoughts, and I realised that the train was about to depart the station. A strong fear of my parents being furious with me kept me firmly planted in my seat, otherwise I would have been running out the door. Then the sound of the compartment door alerted me to my left, and I looked up to see a boy about my age standing there. He had black hair and a very cheeky grin. _Here's trouble,_ I thought to myself. I wasn't wrong, either. He was trouble in the form of a boy named Sirius Black. 

"Hello there, redhead." He said, flicking his hair out of his eyes. He had a mischievous look on his face, which I later realised was his neutral expression.

"Uh, hello there… blackhead?" I smiled nervously. I hadn't grown up knowing too many boys, so I tended to get a bit nervous around them. It isn't uncommon for eleven-year-olds. I don't know what it was, but I'd grown up thinking that boys had germs, and were horrible creatures. They scared me sometimes, and when a boy had tried to approach me in primary school, I had always, without doubt, run away. He smiled a proper grin then, and stuck out his hand.

"I suppose being a blackhead is worse than being a redhead, if you think about it," He mused, shaking my hand firmly. "_I_ am Sirius Black." He said proudly. "And I guess there are worse things in life to be than a pimple." I gave him a look which must have translated as 'You are bizarre, go away,' which only succeeded in making him grin more, if that was possible. "Are you a muggle born?" He asked.

"A what?" I asked, finding my voice at last. I had a vague idea what a muggle was, as they had been mentioned in the letter from Hogwarts, but my memory had abandoned me at that point in time.

"A muggle born… are your parents non magical folk?" He sat down across from me and made himself comfortable.

"Oh, yes. I'm the only witch, if that's what you mean. So yes, I'm a muggle born."

"You look it."

"Ex_cuse_ me?" I suddenly forgot my nervousness. How dare he come in and presume - correctly, but that is not the point - that I was a muggle born! I could have come from a long line of witches and wizards for all he knew!

"Oh, not as in you look like a muggle, which you do, by the way - but you have that dumbstruck look on your face which most people have when they find out that they're a wizard or witch. That look that says you're new to all this stuff." 

"I do not look like a muggle!" I had stopped listening after he'd said that part.

"You do so!" He argued, sniggering a little. "You're wearing muggle clothes, for one - and you don't have the special wizards mark." He said with authority.

"Wizards mark?" I was a little worried at that point.

"Or witches mark, you don't have one of them either."

"Witches mark?" I was getting very worried now.

"Well, see, you're sorted once you get to Hogwarts - into one of four houses. If you have the wizards or witches mark, you go directly into Gryffindor - the really good house. If you're not, you go into Slytherin, Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff." He nodded with the air of one who is wise. "Or, you get sent home." He added for good measure. 

"I don't believe you." I told him… well, told myself, really. I quaked a little, and tried to keep my cool.

"It's okay, if you make it into Ravenclaw, I'll let you be my friend."

"But what if I do get sent home?" I burst out.

"It's very rare, to be sent home." He smiled reassuringly. His eyes were doing that twinkling thing, which, to me, just wasn't one hundred percent trustworthy - in Sirius' case, anyway.

"Well I don't believe you." I said, stubbornly, and a bit defiantly. He seemed like the type of person who liked to pull pranks. _(Oh, the underestimation!)_

"Ooh, you're better than I thought." He smiled back. "You do get sorted though, but I think you just have to perform a whole heap of charms and block some spells."

"Are you a muggle born?" I asked curiously, though I was sure he wasn't. That and I wanted to change the subject.

"Me? Nah, I'm what they call a pure blood. You'd think the wizarding world was a dog-breeding exhibition, really. My father said that his father got a job based purely on the fact that he was a pure blood. This was about sixty years ago though. I love dogs, by the way."

"Why does that matter?" I asked. Why should someone with pure wizard blood be better than others? Magic was magic, wasn't it? 

"For some families," Sirius started. I couldn't help but detect a twinge of bitterness in his voice. I could have been having a brain fuse shortage, but Sirius was never a bundle of joy when he was talking about his family. It seemed to take the mischief out of him, and calm his hyperactive nature. "It's all about their wizarding pride, which is all wrapped up in their blood lines. Wizards have been around since the beginning of all the world, and were given a duty to look out for their non magical counterparts. It is said that everyone was born a wizard, but the magic soon began to die out, and after that, there was a chasm between the people. The people who weren't magical were bitter, and tried to get rid of magic. It was more successful than wizards had expected, and they started having to hide from the others. The wizards were in one camp, and they didn't have a name. The non magical had a camp that lay between Muggle Marsh and the Muggle Mines, which is how they got their names. Anyway, there is a tie between the muggle and wizarding world that dates all the way back to ancient times. Wizards have an obligation to look out for those who are less fortunate. The noble families, the rich ones with lots of money, mainly Royalty and Nobility, Baron's and Duchesses, they thought that they were above all of that, and that only the dregs of society would look out for muggles. You'll learn all about this at Hogwarts, mind you. I'm not wasting precious prank pulling time giving you a history lesson!" Sirius seemed to forget what he was talking about, which amused me. 

"Is magic still dying out?" I asked, genuinely curious.

"Well, not really." He furrowed his brow a little, "but like I said, you'll learn more at Hogwarts, I don't know everything." 

"So how could you tell that I was a muggle?" My curiosity won out over ignoring the subject.

"Well, I knew you weren't a muggle, otherwise… well you're here, aren't you? But apart from the clothes, like I said, you had that look on your face. I could tell that everything was new to you. What's your name?"

"Oh! Sorry! I'm Lily Evans." I had forgotten to tell him my name. 

"See, you even have a muggle name," he teased.

"You'd want to have been joking, Sirius Black." His name was not muggle, that was for sure. Sirius. I don't think I'd ever heard of it before. And besides, Lily was a much more sensible name than _Sirius_.

"Or what?" He taunted. I had never met such a stirrer.

"Or _this_." I grinned evilly and picked up my wand from beside me, swished and flicked, and said "Wingardium Leviosa!"

Nothing happened.

Sirius burst out laughing. I'd never seen such a laugh. He laughed with his entire body, not just his mouth, he slapped his knee and his mouth was wide open, his shoulders shook. It was infectious, really. The urge to laugh was strong, but my embarrassment at the failed spell was stronger. 

"You're saying it all _wrong_." He stifled a giggle. "It's Wing-AR-dium Levi-O-sa," and pointed to the pronunciation guide on the opposite page of the text book. 

"All right then, Wing-AR-dium Levi-O-sa!" I said, swishing and flicking away. Well it certainly worked that time, and he went skyrocketing into the compartment ceiling. "Oh my God, it worked!" I said out loud, as though I'd just created fire, or in this case, magic. "It _actually_ worked! It was magic!" I exclaimed, mainly to myself.

"OW! All right Evans! You have got a bit of a fuse, don't you!" the small boy winced and rubbed his head.

Perhaps I was a little too enthusiastic? Instead of apologising, which I had meant to do, I said, "Muggle, am I?" I then put my wand down, but there was a small problem. Sirius stayed up in the air. "Uh… what do I do?" I asked, starting to panic a bit. What if I got into trouble? He knew I was worried, because after he rubbed his head from where he'd hit it - not softly either - he crossed his arms. "Tell me how to get you down!" I demanded.

"No, I think I'll just wait for a teacher to come and get me down." He grinned at me. My head was spinning. Expelled before I'd even started, what would my parents say?

"Please! I don't want to be expelled, my parents will kill me!" I shrieked. I realised that I sounded a lot like a three-year-old. It took me a minute to realise that Sirius was up there laughing his head off. When he'd calmed down from the laughing, he climbed off the luggage racks and jumped down easily. 

What is it with me finding people who manage to make me look like an idiot?

"You hadn't even noticed that I was in the luggage rack, did you?" He was laughing again. I just glared at him. How annoying could one person _get_? If I had known how annoying _he_ could get, I would have snapped my wand in half and stayed a muggle. Okay, maybe not - but I think you get the gist of it.

We talked for a little while, and I started to forget that he was a boy. Well, I knew that he was a boy, but it stopped mattering. I could be completely, openly obnoxious to him without feeling nervous.

"You might well be the most annoying critter on this planet," I told him.

"And you are the lamest." He had replied. He wasn't at all bothered by the fact that he was annoying. In fact, he probably went out of his way to piss people off. "You have the personality of a wet mop." He went on, grinning like a Cheshire cat.

"Tell me. Why are you in here talking to someone with the personality of a wet mop?" I asked, poking him on the shoulder.

"Because you're one of the only girls who doesn't go all funny around boys. All the girls I know are lame. They get all giggly, or they don't talk, and they run away." I kept my mouth shut and hoped I had a normal expression on my face. I shrugged, trying to look casual. 

"You're just a boy," I said, acting cool. "What's to be nervous about?" I felt the back of my neck flush, and it was threatening to creep onto my face.

"Exactly. I like you, Lily Evans. I think I'll let you be my friend." He said, leaning back in the seat and putting his legs up. 

"Don't do me any favours," I replied, rolling my eyes. "And what makes you think I'd want to be your friend?" I asked, secretly outraged at his presumptions.

"Everyone wants to be my friend. You'll see. Anyway, I've got to go and get changed. I'll see you at school. Hopefully you don't get sent home." 

If I ever saw him again, I vowed to myself that I would strangle him. 

I tried to sleep a bit. We wouldn't be getting into Hogwarts until about eight o'clock that night. It was only half past one. I tried lying down on the seats, but every time the train went around a corner, I fell off. So I tried sitting up, with my head against the window, but the class rattled and tickled my ears. So, I was sitting there, feeling a bit grumpy at all the travelling, and plotting ways to get to sleep. I wriggled down in my seat, stuck my legs out, and rested them on the edge of the seat opposite. This way I wouldn't roll or fall off the seat. I must have looked a sight, though. My chin was resting on my chest, and my body was lying half off the seat. 

I'd just about dozed off when I heard a knock at the compartment door. It slid open, and a girl about my age was standing there, peering in.

"Hello." she said, smiling. 

"Hi there," I replied, getting up and stretching a bit "and who are you?"

"I'm Georgia Green," she said a bit shyly. I laughed to myself and wondered if everyone who was going to come into this compartment would have a colour as a surname. 

"Hello Georgia Green, I'm Lily Evans." I replied, trying to smile politely. My mother had always told me to be polite to people when I first met them. Sometimes I was, sometimes I wasn't.

"Are you a first year?" She asked, still standing at the door.

"Yes, can't you tell?" I asked, smiling a bit. 

"Well, actually, I could, but I thought it would be polite to ask," she admitted. I laughed. 

"You can sit down if you like, unless you just like standing in doors." I said, gesturing at the seat opposite me.

"Are you sure? You looked so comfortable," she said, grinning wickedly. I liked this girl; she wasn't as meek as she looked. I grinned back.

"Looks can be deceiving."

"I'm a muggle born, are you?" She asked, sitting down.

"I am, but I bet you already knew that." I said.

"Yeah. I did." She grinned again.

We talked for the rest of the trip, which was weird for me, as I never really talked about myself to other people. I had always been fairly reserved and withdrawn around other people. I didn't find it hard to talk to Georgia, though, and told her all about myself. I found out that she had grown up in Scotland, moving to Rugby when she was ten. She was possibly the most interesting person I'd ever met. 

Georgia was small and dainty, with dark hair that was braided into long black braids, and dark brown eyes that always laughed at you. She was graceful in a way that I could never be, she was elegant, and she was cheeky. Her smile was nice, and she had sincere eyes (despite the fact that you felt like she was itching to laugh whenever you looked into them), but when she grinned - I couldn't help but be reminded of Sirius Black. Georgia was very nicely spoken, she never swore, and she always said please and thank you. "Golly!" She would often say of things that surprised her, or "Fiddlesticks," when something perplexed her, which amused me no end. She had five younger brothers and an older sister who hated her. I could relate to that, as Petunia and I were less than friendly towards each other. She was the only magical one at this point, but she suspected that her younger brother Zac was a wizard. Her whole family was excited about having a witch in the family - including, though begrudgingly, her older sister. We talked about our families a lot, and what they were like. 

"My mother used to call me GG," she told me, cringing a little.

"Meh… My mother used to call me doodle." I told her, feeling her pain tenfold.

We talked until we arrived at the station, and it was dark by then. We huddled out onto the station. Despite it being summery weather, it was still a little cold outside at that time of night. We were talking quietly when this _giant_ came up to us and stood there with a lamp. I was so scared that I gripped Georgia's arm with the suction force of a giant squid. I had read stories about giants, and how they ground up children's bones to make bread. I had a crazy idea to tell him that I had no bones, which is how irrational I was feeling at the time.

"Firs' years this way!" he bellowed, holding the lamp up high. "I'm Rubeus Hagrid, I'm the keeper of the keys and grounds at Hogwarts, an' I'll be showin' yers to the school." He continued to bellow. "Keep up!"

I looked at Georgia, who looked equally as startled as I did. We glanced at each other and followed the giant called Rubeus Hagrid. He took us to a dock, where about thirty boats were tied up. 

"Four to a boat!" He shouted, starting to untie them. Soon we found ourselves travelling across a great lake, which I later found out was called, funnily enough, The Great Lake. 

The castle loomed ahead, like a giant pimple (of a very pointy sort) against the inky blue sky. There was a spattering of stars, which looked like someone had sneezed all over the sky. (You know when you sneeze on paper, and it's shiny? No? Okay then.) I was a bit dumbfounded at how big the castle was, and even more dumbfounded that it was a castle at all! My experiences with school buildings had been of the small fiberglass sort with a concrete quadrangle on one side, and a small patch of grass on the other. This was something else entirely. It had towers, extensions, you name it, they had it. 

Rubeus Hagrid then led us right _under_ the castle, where there was a small sheltered cove. I was a bit worried that the whole castle may cave in, what with a great big hollow bit underneath it and all. We all got out of the boat and huddled on the pebbly shore. None of us knew what was happening, so we whispered quietly amongst ourselves. 

Most of us were frightened out of our skins by a huge thumping being made on a wooden door, and the few that weren't frightened out of their skin were when it happened another five times. A door opened, and a stern looking witch with black hair opened the door and glared at Rubeus Hagrid. 

"Hagrid, you do not need to knock that many times. I can hear your _voice_ before you even start knocking." She said, in a clipped tone. I got the impression that she was the no nonsense type. 

"Welcome to Hogwarts, First Years. I am Professor McGonagall. If you will follow me, I shall lead you through to the dining room, where you shall each be sorted into a house." 

I became a bit nervous at this point, and nearly vomited when Sirius Black winked at me and held his hands in a thumbs up. Slowly, the people at the front of the line were starting to move. Vaguely, I heard Georgia beside me, reassuring herself quietly.

"Quickly!" McGonagall said, quickening her pace. The sight of a hundred or more grim faces must have been rather depressing for her, and to endure it year after year after year would not have been a mean feat. Honestly, it was like we were all going to our death sentencing. With baited breath, and probably a heck of a lot of stomach cramps, we hurried along after her, on our way to be sorted.

***

Authors Notes: Um, *searches*… Can't find any quotes in this chapter, but believe me, there will be many throughout this fic. 

21.6.2003: Okay, well I'm waiting until the dust of book 5 settles before posting this, because unfortunately, this has to go AU. The sad and undeniable fact is that Lily Evans and James Potter had a love/hate relationship, which is annoying because love/hate has been done to death. JK Rowling has merely nailed the lid onto the coffin as far as I'm concerned. As I said before, this fic *will not* be a love/hate relationship, meaning that I am not going to have them loathe each other and then wake up one day and go 'Whoa! Dude! I like Potter/Evans!' There will be a very tempestuous side to Lily, which you will witness frequently, as this story is from her point of view. So yes, I *know* that Lily hated James at one stage, and don't think I won't be using that bit in canon in this fic, because I will be. Maybe. Believe it or not, I already had Sirius and his family characterised before I read book five, so I was a little surprised at how closely I pictured Sirius's family to what they are like in canon. 


End file.
